


Jigsaw Hearts

by NothingGold



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Emotions, Family Feels, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Angst, Johnny Silverhand Having Feels Besides Rage, Johnny learning not to be trash, No Beta, Not Really Character Death, Panam to the rescue, Rescue Missions, Saving your brain bro from the matrix, Several thousand words of Panam giving Johnny shit, adding more tags as I go, johnny being lame AF, johnny is not okay with the ending., no choom left behind, ohgodwhyamIdoingthistomyself, okay maybe a bit more than a brain bro
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:35:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28289289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingGold/pseuds/NothingGold
Summary: Johnny Silverhand isn’t the type to let a sleeping dog lie...or leave a real choom behind.
Relationships: Johnny Silverhand/Female V
Comments: 38
Kudos: 248





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this accidentally became a multi-chapter fic? Oops.

Being in V’s body without her riding shotgun is one of the worst things he’s ever felt in his whole goddamn life....either of them, in fact. He’d already known it was gonna be bad, even before they made it to Mikoshi he’d known damn good and well that he was already too far gone. Being in V’s body was just fine while she was there with him; always yapping about his smoking and his drinking and his fuckin’ attitude problem.

He can still remember the half smothered and frustrated affection in her voice when she yelled at him for wanting to have a little fun or ruffle some Corpo feathers. 

The sense-memory of her voice comes to him easy, so easy that he can almost see the crooked smile on her face again and the way she’d rolled her eyes at him like she couldn’t believe he actually said what he said. _Jesus fuckin’ Christ Johnny, were you always this much of a shithead or do you just get a hardon from pissin’ me off?_

It felt good then, being inside of her, comfortable. The two of them were closer than skin, souls all tangled up with one another till even he didn’t rightly know exactly where she started and he ended.

It’s all different now.

Bigtime.

It’s not right anymore. 

Not even a little bit.

Now he’s alone in V’s body. Alone and without the steadying bedrock of her presence to hold him down and anchor him in the now— and that? That’s bad fuckin’ news for everybody concerned. See, it was always V that was the one to make things make sense. V was the only person he’d ever met in his whole goddamn life who could help him pull his head out of his own ass when it counted without getting dragged into whatever disaster it was that he was trying to cause right along with him. 

Without V in it, her body is like a new shoe that fits wrong. 

A great guitar that’s hopelessly out of tune. 

Yeah, they’re nice on the surface, but if you spend a little time with them you see that they ain’t right. 

Ain’t true. 

V should be there bitching at him for smoking, complainin’ about his drinking or maybe calling him a misogynistic shitbird for commenting on some girl’s ass like she wasn’t looking too but all there is in his head now is silence.

V should be there....but she’s not. She’s _not_ and the hollow, empty places that she isn’t in feel like wounds inside of him; raw and fresh and aching. Like he’s still bleedin’ on the inside even though he knows that it’s all over now except for the crying. 

He’s done some of that too. 

A lot of that, actually, not that he’d ever admit it to anybody. He blames it on V’s fucked up hormones but he knows better. This particular bit of blatant bitchery is all on him. Johnny fucking Silverhand and his goddamn feelings. 

.....V woulda told him to suck it up and stop being such a pussy.

He misses her. 

He misses her so much that it feels like he’s lost a fuckin’ limb without her —and there ain’t no cyberware in the whole goddamn world that can replace her.

There it is. 

The thing he can’t get around.

The giant pink elephant in the room....Johnny Silverhand misses V. 

....and that means that there’s only one thing he can do—-he’s gotta go break his girl out of cyberjail and luckily he happens to know a certain Nomad that’ll be happy to lend a hand.

...if she doesn’t shoot him first, that is. 

Either way they’re gonna find out. 

Here’s to the future.


	2. Opening Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Negotiations are a straight-up bitch and Johnny isn’t any good at this feelings shit.

888888888888

Panam Palmer really does have one of the most perfect asses Johnny has ever seen on a woman in his whole goddamn life. Of course, it’d probably be better if that prime ass wasn’t also attached to a woman that wanted to cut his head off and shit in his skull—-but hey, a man can’t have everything. Right? It was still a truly glorious ass and deserving of his profound appreciation. 

Currently the owner of said magnificent ass was glaring up at him from the floor with her dark hair hanging in her face like a curtain and murder gleaming in her eyes. Johnny had tied her to a chair before she’d woken up from the horse tranquilizer he’d used on her earlier in the evening. He’d knocked her out in an effort to keep her from cutting their little pow-wow short before he’d had a chance to speak his piece but unfortunately for him the moment the drugs had worn off and Panam could string a coherent thought together his efforts had proven themselves useless as shit because the Nomad wasn’t interested in hearing a single word out of his mouth.

There was only one thing Panam Palmer wanted from Johnny Silverhand ...and that was blood.

The moment Panam had laid eyes on him she’d lunged against her restraints with every ounce of strength in her body. Fighting them like a wild animal in a mad effort to get at him. To kill him. Hurt him for what he’d done to V. What he was still doing to V. She’d lunged so hard she’d actually tipped the chair over, ending up stuck on her side, arms still tied behind her back, furious and helpless and snarling at him. All teeth and rage and single mindedly determined hatred. A lot of people had hated Johnny Silverhand over the years, some justified, others not so much. 

He’d never cared either way before now. 

Why would he? He was Johnny fucking Silverhand. He did what he wanted, when he wanted and if anybody had a problem with that then it was their issue to deal with and not his. He didn’t give two fucks what anybody thought of him or his decisions. They could think what they wanted as long as they stayed out of his way.

Panam Palmer hates him to the bottom of her angry-ass soul.

It’s something they have in common; because right now Johnny hates himself too. 

“Look Palmer, I know you’re pissed, but if you’ll just listen to me for half a goddamn minute .... “

“...fuck you!” 

“Maybe later, sweetheart.” The words come easy, as vicious and hateful as ever. Johnny was good with a gun and even better with a guitar but his first best and oldest weapon had always been his mouth. “....but right now I need you to shut the fuck up so we can figure out how to get V back!” 

That derails Palmer. Cuts off whatever protest she was about to make and whatever venom she was about to spit at him. Johnny can see the exact moment that the words words sink in, registering themselves through the haze of Panam’s fury and finally _finally_ the Nomad woman stops fighting and starts listening.

“You serious?” Johnny can hear the skepticism in Panam’s wary voice, see it in her eyes and in the sneer on her pretty lips. She doesn’t believe him....but he can’t really blame her for it. He’s not sure he believes himself, either.

“As a heart attack.”

“....then talk.” Panam may not believe a word coming out of Johnny’s mouth just yet, but she’s listening and that’s more than he’d thought he’d get from her this early on. He can work with skepticism, but even if he couldn’t... the truth is that he doesn’t have any other choice. 

He needs Panam. 

THEY need Panam. 

“We want the same thing, Palmer. The both of us lost something important and now we need to go get it back.”

“I didn’t lose a goddamn thing, you son-of-a-bitch! YOU TOOK HER!” Panam snarls at him, her eyes going glassy with tears that Johnny is pretty sure are a combination of both grief and rage. Her words cut into his heart like knives. Bleeding him. Hurting him. Opening him up so he can let out the poison of his own guilt. Johnny can’t help but welcome the pain. He deserves it. He knows he does. V was the only person who’d ever really seen all of him all the good and all the bad. She’d seen the clay feet on the idol and then in the end she’d chosen him above herself— and he’d let her. 

Like a coward. 

“You took her, Silverhand! You fucking killed her! She trusted you, you piece of shit! V thought you were her fucking choom and you fucking KILLED her for it, you two-faced piece of shit!” 

“Yeah. I did.” Admitting it feels like....absolution. 

Free-fall. 

All Johnny can do is let it happen.

“ I fucked up, Palmer! You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t feel it every time I look in a goddamn mirror? “ Johnny laughs and even to him it sounds off. Cracked and broken and bordering on manic. He drags one hand though V’s too-short hair, fighting the urge to yank it out by the roots. 

“Every time I breathe or move or shit or talk she’s right there! You think you two were close? You don’t know SHIT about close till you live in someone else’s SOUL.” He drags Panam’s chair upright and pushes their faces close together. Close enough that Panam can’t miss the changes still happening to the body that had once belonged to their friend. 

To V.

Under the neon blue hair dye V had been a blonde, pale as cornsilk —but now at the roots her platinum hair is coming in black. Dark and accusatory. Her modded eyes are still red but the shape of them is already changing, slowly shifting from wide and always laughing to hooded and sullen, deep set with a faintly east-Asian tilt. 

The chip is still working. Still re-writing the bones of V into someone else, into him,—and Johnny can’t stop it. Every moment that passes V gets a little further away and one day she’ll be gone entirely...and all that will be left behind is Johnny fucking Silverhand.

Johnny means to stop that from happening...but he can’t do it alone.

V taught him that. It was her last, greatest gift to him. 

Maybe if he hadn’t gone it alone when they went to Mikoshi, things could have been different for both of them. 

He won’t make the same mistake twice. 

“You think I wanted this?” he asks bitterly. 

“Didn’t you?” The loathing in Panam’s voice matches the misery in Johnny’s heart to a T. 

“Fuck no!”

“I never wanted this, Palmer. I was gonna send her back... just like I said I would—but she wouldn’t go!” The truth of it hurts, flays Johnny down to blood and bone. He hates that his voice cracks as he speaks. Hates his own pain being so clearly on display, but there’s nothing he can do about it now. “She wouldn’t fuckin’ go!”

Johnny pushes himself back and away from Panam, settling himself back on the sagging mattress of the nameless motel he’d brought them to after kidnapping her. He looks away so she can’t see the glassy sheen of tears in his eyes. Johnny hates this. Hates being vulnerable with every fiber of his being. He wants a cigarette so bad he can taste it...but V’d be pissed if he smoked—so he doesn’t. 

V’s still riding his ass, even from beyond the goddamn grave.

“Guess she figured at least one of us might as well live.” he mutters, looking fixedly down at his hands. Their hands. He’s quiet for a long time and so is Palmer. The two of them existing in their memories of V and avoiding looking at one another while they organize their thoughts. While they put their walls back up. 

“...sounds like V alright.” she finally says, and Johnny takes comfort in the fact that Palmer sounds almost as frustrated by that particular character trait of V’s as he is. 

“Chip fucked up her body. Bad.” Johnny’s never been great at explaining things like this but he needs Panam to understand what’s happening...and why. What they’re fighting is more than just who’s in the drivers seat. 

“Turns out it was doing more than just re-wiring her brain and handing the reins to me. The fucking thing was rewriting her whole goddamn genetic code. Everything. From the fucking ground up. This shit was meant for Saburo Arasaka, and I guess the arrogant prick wanted to be himself for eternity...because that’s what the chip really does. It remakes you. You put it in a body and it makes that body YOURS.” 

“Jesus Christ...” The horror in Panam’s voice is more gratifying than it probably should be but Johnny doesn’t have time to gloat about it. He’s gotta get Palmer onboard with his plan or they might as well just give up right now and give V up for dead—and that’s not a thing he’s willing to do..

“Yeah, now you’re getting it.”

“That’s bad news all on it’s own ...but the bigger issue here is that V ain’t dead. Not totally. Alt lit her up with Soulkiller, Panam. She made an engram of V but when she went to upload her back into her body after she got me the fuck OUT there was a snag. It wasn’t compatible anymore. It wasn’t V anymore. Her body was gonna reject the upload. It had already remade itself enough into me that...”

“....that it didn’t recognize V anymore. “ Panam finishes for him and Johnny nods, avoiding her eyes. 

“...yeah.”

“That’s beyond fucked up.”

“Yeah, it is.” Understatement of the goddamn century, right there.

“So. What’s our next move?”

Our. She said _our_. For the first time since he’d woken up alone in a body wearing the face of the best friend he’d ever had Johnny smiles. Really smiles. 

It feels more like a baring of teeth than anything warm, though. “I got a few ideas.”

_Hold on, V. Hang on a little longer, because we’re coming for you kiddo._ _I’m coming for you._


	3. Prelude

Panam’s never been all that great with people. 

She runs hot and she knows it—-hits overload too easy and when she comes back down she’s almost always managed to say some shit she doesn’t actually mean to the person who least deserved to hear it. It’s not her most shining character trait. She’s tried all her life to shake it it the sad truth is that she’s had extremely limited success and that means that a lot of people just —-can’t handle her.

Panam can’t really blame them for it.

She’d rubbed Saul the wrong way since the day they met and her godawful temper had made her relationship with the Aldocaldos rockier than it’d really needed to be for years until they’d figured out that even if Panam was yelling at the, it didn’t mean she was necessarily mad at THEM...it just meant that she cared. 

That they meant something to her. 

They were her family.

V had always been the exception to the rule, though. 

V’d never once been put off by Panam’s barking; even from the very beginning she’d been solid as a rock and twice as steady. 

It wasn’t like Panam had tried to shield her from her more negative personality traits, either. If anything V’d gotten it worse than most other people did at first. Panam hadn’t liked depending on an outsider. Hadn’t liked getting fucked over by Rogue and she’d been prepared to take it out on V but instead of giving ground when Panam got pissed —V had weathered the storm. The other woman hadn’t even flinched when one night, after a job gone particularly poorly, Panam had well and truly lost her temper. 

The whole thing had been a shitshow from start to finish and the both of them had been run ragged trying to save the mission for three days straight. It hadn’t worked and they’d botched it ...and an innocent person had paid the price for their mistake. She’d been all up in V’s space and snarling at the other woman; heart-hurt and lashing out at anything and anybody unfortunate enough to be close enough to catch the blowback but V’d just...stood there— leaning quietly against the wall of her shit-hole apartment with this weird little half smile on her sharp face like she knew something Panam didn’t. She’d let Panam blow her engines out until she felt like she could _breathe_ again and then V had calmly handed her a beer and a burrito and told her to sit her loud ass down before she fell down and then tell her in her big-girl voice what the fucking problem was. 

In response Panam had sat her loud ass down, eaten her damn burrito, drank her beer and by the time she was finished she’d decided that V was the closest thing to a sister she was ever going to get. 

No matter what was going on, V had always made time for Panam. 

Always. 

Even when the V’s own clock was counting down to zero she’d still been willing to drop whatever it was she was doing to come lend Panam a hand or a fist—- or even a sword, come to it. V was always there. Always willing to take up the slack when Panam herself couldn’t, ready to back her calls without any hesitation. V had stood just behind Panam’s shoulder, making peace and cracking jokes and while she was there Panam had known in her bones that nobody could ever put a knife in her back. 

V wouldn’t let them.

Then V was gone—and the world was a darker, uglier and vastly shitter place without her in it. 

It was Silverhand who’d made the call to tell her— but he hadn’t really needed to do it because Panam had already known. It’d sound stupid to anybody else, impossible and illogical and Panam would never breathe a word of it to another soul ...but it was the truth. 

Silverhand hadn’t needed to tell her because Panam had felt it happen. 

One moment she’d been hunched over a console on the Basilisk; swearing and snarling and trying to figure out where in the metal-plated-fuck the short in the wiring was without falling in and cracking her head open on the grav-well and then suddenly her blood had gone cold, ice-water pouring down her spine as she was filled with an overwhelming sense of loss.

Of emptiness. 

She’d known V wasn’t coming back.

Silverhand’s call was just the confirmation; and the sight of the bastard’s face on her vo-call screen had filled Panam with a white hot fury the likes of which she’d never experienced before in her entire fucking life. 

How dare he? 

How fucking _dare_ he. 

How dare he sit there wearing her sister’s face and act like he gave a fuck about V when HE was the reason she was gone. 

When it was all his fucking fault.

It was Silverhand’s engram that had chewed away at V until there was nothing left of who she’d been and now he finally had what he wanted.

A body. 

V’s body. 

A body he’d stolen from its rightful owner piece by hard-won piece with V herself fighting him for it every step the whole way out.

Panam had sworn to herself in that moment that she was going to pay Johnny Silverhand back for what he’d done. It didn’t matter to her how far the bastard ran or how many ennys he had. It didn’t matter how many people he put between the two of them or who they were—Panam was going to kill that body-snatching son of a bitch if it was the last thing she ever did on this goddamn earth and she didn’t care if it took her the rest of her life to make it happen. It would be time well spent.

Johnny Silverhand wasn’t going to ride off into the sunset with V’s body like he had the right to have it; because if V couldn’t have her happy ending then by-god Panam was going to make sure that Silverhand didn’t have his either. When she’d closed the call that day Panam had intended that the next time she locked eyes with Johnny Silverhand it would be right before she put a bullet in his cybernetic skull .

Instead he’d managed to ambush her at a job meetup.

Silverhand had darted her from a distance with her own goddamn rifle like a fucking elephant and she’d had just enough time before she passed out completely to give him the finger as he sauntered his way toward her; boots clicking on the pavement and a smirk on his stolen face. She’d thought as she went under that that was going to be the end for her. 

Instead of death, however, when Panam woke up again Silverhand was sitting across from her on the worn and time-faded bed of whatever rat infested flophouse he’d brought the two of them to. The situation wasn’t ideal. Panam didn’t have her gun or a knife or even her arms but none of that had mattered to her at the time. All that mattered was that Johnny Silverhand was in arms reach. She’d done her best to try and rip his throat out, than willing to use her own teeth to do it if it meant getting the job done; but unfortunately Silverhand had been quicker than she was. 

She’d still been lagging from the sedative he’d hit her with —and that meant that the only thing Panam accomplished when she went for him had been overturning the chair he’d tied her to; sending her crashing to the ground in an indignant, helpless heap and once she was down all she could do was hate him from the floor. 

Loudly.

..but then he’d pulled her upright again and started talking; and a few minutes later for the first time in over six months Panam had seen a light at the end of the tunnel. 

It might not be entirely too late to save V. 

As much as she hates Johnny Silverhand—Panam loves V more. 

If it meant getting V back then Panam would ride with Satan himself to make it happen; much less an arrogant geriatric shitstain of a mind-raping, body-stealing Rockerboy. His plan is a long-shot, but Panam is willing to take her chances with it regardless

Its hope, and that’s more than she’d ever expected to have again. 

That doesn’t meant she has to like it, though.

She’s been riding with Johnny Silverhand for the better part of a week now and her skin still crawls every time she looks at him. He may be wearing V’s body but nobody who’d ever known the real V would ever mistake the two of them. There’s just no way; not even for a second. They’re just too different from one another. V was almost always smiling. Big smiles, little smiles....sometimes mean ones too. V could smile while she cut the head off a Raffen and tell a joke mid-swing.

Panam had always loved that about her.

Silverhand doesn’t actually smile much —-and when he does it’s always ALWAYS mean. When Johnny Silverhand smiles it’s a spiteful, nasty, and profoundly vindictive expression. It slides across his stolen face like an oil slick over pure water, unsettling and all the creepier for its wrongness. That smile doesn’t belong on that face ...and anybody with eyes can see it. 

He doesn’t move like V either, not by a long shot. 

V was always graceful. 

V’d moved like a dancer....or maybe a tiger would be a better comparison. Panam had seen a vid of one, once, in school. It had moved a lot like V. Quick and quiet and always _always_ precise. 

Just like V.

If you heard V move it was because she meant you to and when she fought it was like watching greased lightning. V wasn’t a closer. She was too small for that shit even with her mods; and so instead of brute force V had instead relied on her speed and her stealth; darting in and out of range, there and gone again before her opponents even realized she’d made it past their guard. 

When V killed someone the only expression on their faces at the end was surprise—-and sometimes profound confusion. 

Johnny Silverhand, on the other hand , wouldn’t know subtlety or grace if it jumped up and bit him square in the ass. In a fight his usual tactic was shock-and-awe. Silverhand comes in like a tornado and all anyone could do is try to get the fuck out of his way and survive the onslaught

The man is loud, loud when he talks and loud when he moves and he never EVER shuts the fuck up.

The prick even talks in his goddamn sleep; and Panam isn’t entirely sure how much longer she’s going to make it without smothering him in his fucking sleep with a pillow. She doesn’t have the faintest fucking clue how V managed to put up with having him in her head 24/7 for so long but longer Panam spends with the man the greater her respect for V’s patience grows. 

Silverhand is a dickhead— but for all that he’s a megawatt pain in her ass Panam now knows that despite what she’d thought about him at first he does genuinely care for V. 

He more than cares. 

Johnny Silverhand is in _love_ with V and that is so very VERY not something Panam had expected. 

It was hard to imagine the man in the stories Panam has heard all her life giving a shit about anything but himself—-but he does. 

He really, really does. 

The proof is on his face every time he talks about V. Panam can see it every time he eyes a shot of whiskey like a man dying of thirst in a desert but then doesn’t pick it up because he knows V didn’t drink. It’s in the way Silverhand’s fingers drift to V’s necklace when he’s thinking, thumbing over the bullet that had started the whole mess they’d found themselves in and in the way his eyes soften when she catches him staring at V’s face in the mirror.

Once, when he’d thought she was asleep, she’d watched him stare into the mirror for the better part of an hour—fingers tracing the reflection of the thin curve of V’s mouth and honest-to-god tears dripping down his face. 

Panam has never seen anybody cry as quietly as Johnny Silverhand. 

He doesn’t make a sound. 

Not a single one.

Not a sniffle or a breath. 

Nothing.

He just stands there, tears flowing down his cheeks like a river he can’t turn off; lost, pale faced and utterly miserable. 

In two hours they’ll be meeting their contact in the middle of the desert and she can’t help but feel sorry for whoever it is if they can’t give Silverhand what he wants. If Arasaka had thought the man was a problem before they have no idea what’s headed their way now. Last time they took someone he gave a shit about he nuked a whole mega-building.

This time? 

This time it’s war—and Panam has a front row seat.

It oughta be a hell of a show.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fun with frenemies.

Waiting is the worst part of any job. It’s boring as shit, takes forever, and there’s nothing to do in the meantime but work yourself up into a total fucking mess about anything and everything that could possibly go wrong. It’s kinda funny to Johnny in retrospect; though, because even though he absolutely hates waiting with every fiber of his being; it had never bothered V at all. It still irritated him, even in V’s body. 

Waiting never shook V’s nerves, though. 

Not even a little bit. 

No matter how long it was, waiting never wound his girl up at all. If they had something to do at a certain time, V would either find them something to pass the time while they waited or she’d settle them in somewhere nearby and just—chill. Her favorite thing was to find a patch of sun and settle herself into it like a lazy cat; pointy little face tilted up to catch the most possible sunlight; effortlessly content in the moment in a way Johnny had never been able to manage for himself without chemical assistance.

Johnny had always needed to move. 

To act. 

Being still just wasn’t an option for him; and he’d been that way for as long as he could remember. When he was a kid his Ma had dragged him to dozens of doctors looking for some sort of explanation for him —being himself. She’d desperately wanted a cure for the restless itch under Johnny’s skin that had kept him in constant motion; always searching for something he could never name no matter how many times she asked him. 

The quacks had thrown bullshit words at her instead; shit like ADHD and ODD, one of them even said he had reactive attachment disorder, whateverthefuck that was. To Johnny it had all been a mixed bag of alphabet soup that ultimately said the same thing. 

Little Johnny is a fuckup. 

The cures they promised his Ma had all involved meds that’d made his brain feel like syrup and they had drained the world of any color or soul and made him feel like a dead man walking. Moving through his own life like a ghost. Eventually it had gotten so bad that he couldn’t even summon the energy or interest to play guitar anymore and that was was when he’d known that he had to go. 

Had to get out. 

Johnny had run away at fifteen; slipping out of his window in the middle of the night with nothing but a backpack and his guitar and then he’d spent the next three years bouncing from place to place. Busking on the street for money enough to feed himself and get hotels now and again. He’d turned a few tricks too, when times were really hard and playing didn’t bring in enough tips to make do. You did what you had to when you were alone and he’d never put any sort of value on fucking, so if someone wanted to pay him for doing something he’d probably do for free anyway, who was he to judge? 

He’d joined the army at eighteen—-and he was nineteen when he’d killed a man for the first time.

It felt like flying. 

Like falling.

He was 25 when he came home from the war; missing an arm and with nightmares that pulled him from his sleep screaming and sweating with the memory of the ones who hadn’t made it back. The worst of it though was that nothing had changed —nothing but him, at least. He’d killed his way across a goddamn continent but the restlessness was still there. Still itching just beneath his skin. 

Then Samurai had happened, and after that he was Johnny fucking Silverhand; his dreams offered up at his booted feet as he screamed his rage into the void for the world to hear. He’d thought he’d left the battlefield behind him; but the truth was that he’d brought the war back home with him.

It was in him. 

Part of him.

Maybe it had always been there or maybe not, but it didn’t really matter one way or another...because it was there regardless. 

No getting away from it. 

Fighting was the only thing that had ever made him feel _alive_ and it was easy to find a fight when there was so much out there in the world to hate. Arasaka had been ad good a target as any for him to vent his rage on.

Then he’d died. 

Then there was V.

V. 

V was like no one Johnny had ever met before; she was the type of woman that wouldn’t have given him the time of day before he got himself stuck in her head. V didn’t put up with a single moment of his shit ...but unlike most people she wasn’t mean about it. Johnny hadn’t felt violated or caged When V reined him in. As long as it was her...it didn’t hurt. 

It didn’t hurt because he knew that even if she didn’t particularly like what he was doing at the moment that she still respected him. 

Still liked _him_. 

They were different people>..but somehow they’d fit together. If Johnny was fire then V was ice. Steady and enduring; she’d loved the people around her so fiercely that sometimes it took his breath away. She’d loved Panam and the Aldocaldos with all her heart. V’s dreams were always of the endless road, of freedom with Palmer at her side —-and Johnny himself right there with them. Smiling and sun-brown. 

He’d never been part of anyone else’s happy ending before. 

She’d loved their ugly fucking gremlin-cat. Loved the memory of Jackie Wells and her ripper-doc choom. Loved her friends and eventually...she’d loved him too. Loved him enough to give him her body and smile at him through her own tears as he fell through the void and back down into her body without her.

She’d given him a gift he’d never wanted and didn’t deserve...even though he was nothing but a goddamn digital tapeworm. 

V had loved him anyway.

All Johnny had ever done in his first life was take— and all V did was give; arms wide open, holding out her heart to the world with both hands and smiling even when the world spit on it. She was fearless in a way Johnny couldn’t be and it hadn’t taken more than a week for him to be a lost fucking cause...at least when it came to her. 

There’d never been anyone like V in his life before and her was as terrified as he was happy.

Johnny had cared for Alt, he really had, but the truth was that he hadn’t respected her. Not really. She’d grown on him over time but at first she’d been like every other thirsty piece of ass that had wanted a ride. Which he’d happily given her, totally free of charge...but Johnny had never looked into his future and imagined Alt in it with him.

Not once. 

He hadn’t blown up the Arasaka Tower for Alt; he’d blown it up for himself—because they’d pissed him off by taking something he saw as his. 

It’s different now. 

This time they have V...and there’s nothing Johnny won’t do to get her back. Nothing at all. He can’t stand looking at a future without V in it and that means that he’s got to sack the fuck up and get over his goddamn self because he can’t save V alone. 

So he’d kidnapped Palmer. 

She wasn’t much better with people than Johnny himself was... but she loves V too and most importantly she’d never choose Johnny himself over V. Never. V was a self-sacrificing pain in his goddamn ass—if push came to shove she’d always sacrifice herself for others. Palmer on the other hand would happily push Johnny off the nearest cliff head first if it got V back.

And that is exactly what he needs. 

The fact the he needs her doesn’t make being around the bitch any easier, though. That much is gospel fucking fact. There’s only so much loathing a man can stand without cracking. 

Palmer’s eternal hate-boner for him aside; there was another thing about her that Johnny definitely didn’t appreciate. 

She stared.

All. The. Goddamn. Time.

Palmer was always watching him; narrow-eyed and speculative. It made Johnny’s borrowed skin want to crawl righ the fuck off his body. He knew she was probably just doing it because she was waiting for him to fuck up, as usual, but it was still _weird_ and he didn’t like it. It was the worst when they were alone with nothing else to focus on.

Like now. 

They’re waiting to meet a connection that he’d managed to pry out of Wakako with sheer stubborn persistence and and the nomad woman has been staring at him non-stop for the last half hour and he can’t take it another minute. 

“D’ya think I’m that hot, Palmer?” His voice is harsh, cutting as it splits the otherwise still air. “You haven’t stopped staring at me for a while now; I’m starting to wonder if maybe you have some kinda thing for me.”

“Not even if you were the last man on earth and the survival of the human species depended on us fucking, Silverhand. “ Panam retorted flatly, a look of disgust on her face at the very idea. 

Damn, it was like that? Alright then.

“I’m hurt, Palmer.” he said snidely. 

“Well, if you’re not interested what’s with all the eye-fucking?” He asked, watching Panam’s face for any sort of indication about what she was thinking. “You’ve been staring at me for an hour.”

“I’m trying to figure out what V sees in you; and I gotta say, Silverhand, that I’m coming up pretty goddamn short on answers.” Panam replied, sneering at him and leaning back against the wall of old oil drums they were sprawled out against in an effort not to be a neon marked target if their new connect decided to play games. 

“Well fuck you very much too, Palmer.” Johnny sneered back, mimicking her tone and doing his best to ignore the faint spike of genuine hurt that the nomad woman’s barb had caused. 

“You’re an arrogant, stubborn, ego-driven piece of rusty shit and you know it, Silverhand. Your only redeeming quality is that you have the good sense to love V—and before this goes any further I want you to know that when we get her back if you EVER do anything to hurt her I will make you wish you ‘d stayed in that goddamn chip.”

“Aw, are you giving me the shovel talk, Palmer? “ he asked, bringing up one hand to press it against his chest in mocking shock. “I feel so special. ". 

Despite his casual reply; internally, Johnny was panicking. 

How did she know? 

How the fuck had Palmer figured out about his feelings for V? He hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t done anything that he knew of that would give him away—but clearly he’d fucked up somewhere because she absolutely DID know. He wasn’t asshole enough to deny it. It’d be a shit thing to do to V, even if she wasn’t there to see it, so he didn’t bother. 

“No.” Palmer replied, glaring at him like she wanted to gut him. “I’m giving you the ‘bullet between the fucking eyes’ talk. If you hurt my girl the only shovels involved will be the one I bury you in the desert with.”

“We clear?” She asked; her tone so falsely sweet that Johnny was surprised she didn’t gag on it. 

“Crystal.” He grumbled. 

Why were all of V’s friends such assholes? 

Johnny intended to say more, but just as he opened his mouth he heard the distant hum of engines. Their contact was incoming—but one glance down his scope had him swearing under his breath. The contact was there alright ...but he’d brought friends. Three car loads full of them and a preliminary scan showed that they were armed to the fucking teeth. 

Fantastic. 

“Looks like we got company.” He said grimly before looking over to Panam. The Nomad woman didn’t seem worried in the least. Quite the contrary, in fact. Panam smiled, racked her rifle and grinned. “Oh good, I love company. Let’s give ‘em a warm welcome.” 

Johnny smiled, slow and vicious. 

Maybe Palmer wasn’t so bad after all.


End file.
